Future Of The Dollar

Coins go straight from the mint to the Fed to the banks to us.

Who tells the mint how many coins to mint?

AFAIK, that is correct. Mintage is based on what the Fed orders.

I think minting the dollar coins is done for one of the same reasons as the State Quarter series. It's a profit center. Think about it this way, if it costs the government 15 cents to make a dollar coin they get an interest free loan of 85 cents for every dollar that is hoarded. I wouldn't be surprised to finds out that the profit on coins hoarded by collectors makes up for a lot of the overhead of the US Mint.

I don't know if the Government can legally recall coins. I don't think they would have to. If they stopped minting/printing new money the natural life cycle of bills/coins would eventually eliminate most of them, the rest would be snapped up by collectors.

Since when does our government do anything logical? In reality this time they are. By continuing minting coins no one wants or uses, they don't have to worry about anyone counterfeiting them. If no one wants the real ones, no one will make fake ones. Just think about all the fake 16D Merc's, 09S VDB Lincolns, etc. Counterfeiters make theses all the time but no one will make a coin no one wants.
And by starting a series of coins that will take yearly additions, they sort of guarantee their jobs for a few more years anyway.
This would have stopped if the government would just outsourse the coin making to China. Then our coins would all be Lead, none left for toys and the toys would now be safe.
Taking a toll road today I noticed that there was only one toll booth left and about 5 what is called Ipass lanes. Those are where you pay for a thing on your window ahead of time and no longer need coins to go through. AND if you do pay with coins, the toll is now double. Coins are going away. I just wonder when kids will have a plastic card for a gum ball machine?